China sentences rapist of 16 girls to death

BEIJING—A Chinese court has sentenced to death a rapist who posed as a female on social networks to lure 16 girls to meet him, a state news agency reported Thursday.

Wang Yong, 40, was sentenced earlier this month for raping the girls aged 12 to 16 starting in 2009, the official Xinhua News Agency said. He was arrested in September 2012.

Xinhua said Wang was unemployed and posed as a female on online social networks to befriend schoolgirls and convince them to meet him. He raped the girls in hotels.

The Intermediate People's Court in Wuhu city in eastern China's Anhui province also sentenced Wang's accomplice, a 16-year-old girl who said she had been coerced by him, to three years' imprisonment. She brought younger girls whose trust she had gained to the hotels.